On Trend: Meet Southern Design Week designer Courtney Marse

Ladies and gentlemen, meet design jack-of-all-trades Courtney Marse. She’s a graphic designer, surface designer, apparel designer, textile designer and also teaches design at LSU. Her collection is the sole show for Thursday, March 19, during Southern Design Week in New Orleans, and Marse was gracious enough to answer a few questions for us about her designs.

Explain your process from idea to garment.
My process starts with developing non-traditional narratives. People and places inspire me. What many find interesting and inspiring in galleries, I find in people and places. When I travel, I visit the people, their intricacies and interactions, and places, the architecture and personality of a place. When I’m not able to travel, I do so through research and reading. After the story forms, I typically create watercolor and pencil illustrations to depict the story. The illustration is cut into an abstraction, which is used as a module to create a larger print. Parts of the original illustration are combined with the print to create designs that express the narrative that are then engineered to the form. It’s usually about this time that I’m pretty clear on what the silhouette should look like in order to further reflect the story.

This season, I’ve altered my process a bit to bring typography back into my work. I’m also focusing on refining silhouette with the hopes of moving toward production, so you’ll see familiar but limited silhouettes.

Your background is in graphic design. What made you decide to move into designing textiles?
It was during my MFA research that I found digital textile printing and began experimenting with design for the three-dimensional form and engineering prints for textiles. My main goals during that time were to 1. Combine illustration and graphic design and 2. Release it from a two-dimensional space. By examining my unique skills outside of graphic design and the reasons I am drawn to particular subjects for illustration, I found my solution—narrative-based graphic design and engineered prints applied to surfaces.

What was your inspiration for this season’s collection?
I was inspired by the geographic architecture of the Norwegian region Svalbard and what it would be like to experience the snowy glacier-filled islands. Svalbard or Svalbaro translates to “cold shores,” which really set the tone for a curious but serene story.

What is your favorite piece in this collection?
My separates would probably be my favorite. They’re always fun to engineer as a set and at the same time I think about what story they’d tell when broken up and worn separately. I usually don’t have one particular favorite. Because they tell a larger story, I see them as one unit rather than as individuals.

If you had to describe your customer in three words, what would they be?
Inspired, modern, relaxed.

Do you have a pre-show ritual?
Stopping to take it all in. No matter how much prep work goes into showing your work, it’s still a little hectic (or a lot depending on how big I let my ideas get) until the end. I try to just take a moment to appreciate all the help I’ve had that day and leading up to the day and how cool it is that I get to do the thing I love to do.

This is the second time you’ve shown your own designs with your textiles at Southern Design Week. What has been the most exciting thing about it so far?
I think the most exciting thing has been the people I’ve met and connections I’ve made. It’s always fun to be surrounded by so many people who absolutely love what they do and care so much for their industry.

What’s next for you?
One of my goals for 2015 is to complete the design of at least one of the many three-dimensional forms I’ve concepted. I’m currently working on design and construction of a contemporary-style chair with prints from the Fall 2015 collection and exploring how textile is incorporated and how it furthers the story. I’d also really love to get a few garments into production, so I’m navigating that slow but steady process and deciding whether that may be on a limited edition basis or a grander scale.

Tickets are still available to Marse’s show Thursday night, March 19, at Mallory Page Studio in New Orleans.